PANSIES. 



What care I if the pansies purple be, 



Or sweet the wind-harp wails through the slow hours. 

 Or that the lulling music of the sea 



Comes woven with the perfume of the flowers ? 



Thou comest not ! I ponder o'er the leaves, 

 The crimson drift behind the open door ; 



Soon shall we listen to the wind that grieves, 

 Mourning this glad year, dead forevermore. 



And O my love, shall we on some sad day 



Find joys and hopes low fallen like the leaves, 



Blown by life's chilly autumn wind away, 



In withered heaps God's eye alone perceives? 



Come thou, and save me from my dreary thought ! 



Who dares to question Time, what it may bring ? 

 Yet round us lies the radiant summer, fraught 



With beauty; must we dream of sufiTering? 



Yea, even so. Through this enchanted land, 

 This morning-red of life, we go to meet 



The tempest in the desert, hand in hand. 



Along God's paths of pain, that seek His feet. 



